Folks love standards, mostly because we love to compare ourselves to other people and see where we lie on the continuum. It validates us. It gives our ego this little tiny boost that makes us feel good for a minute.

And usually, I’d write a post telling you to forget about standards. Forget what other people are doing. Get off of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Stop watching other people live life and giving yourself massive FOMO while you sit on your couch with re-runs of The Office in the background.

But I think standards can be helpful now and then. They give us metrics to compare ourselves to ourselves, to see how we’re doing. We can pit our strengths against our weaknesses and uncover the areas of our health & fitness that we need to work on.

If you quickly Google the word “toning,” the first page of search results is a mishmash of both pro-toning and anti-toning blog posts. The fitness world loves the word toning. It’s schismatic (how’s that for SAT vocab?) and makes for good blog content. Heck, isn’t that why you clicked on this post in the first place?

And I have a confession: for a while, I was a fitness purist.

I believed that, whenever somebody came to me looking to “tone up,” it was my job to correct them. I needed to explain to them that toning is a myth and that muscles only get bigger or smaller and that bodyfat is what really matters. Then I’d dive into a quick soliloquy (I’m crushing the SAT words today) about rep ranges, percentages, and how we were going to program so that they got exactly where they wanted to be.

But at the end of the day, they just didn’t want the “stuff” on the underside of their arm to jiggle as much.

Rules make things clear. For instance, the NFL’s Catch vs. No-catch Rule has made it super quick and easy to figure out whether a receiver legitimately caught the football (note the subtle sarcastic undertones).

Rules prevent society from breaking out into anarchy. They prevent people from just walking into convenience stores at their leisure and taking whatever items they want. (I’m looking at you, Philadelphia.)

And when it comes to training, rules help guide us in our decision-making.

So without further adieu, I’d like to introduce you to the Three P’s of Exercise Selection.

These rules help guide us in choosing exercises for both ourselves and our members. They help us prioritize what is important during a workout as we make adjustments. Most importantly, they help create consistency in our process.

When I first sat down to write the first part of this series about exercise programs and workouts, I didn’t really imagine that I’d have two blog posts worth of ideas. But now here we are.

I think sometimes I program better for my own clients than I do for myself.

I keep things simple, don’t mess around with rep ranges too much, and assign exercises that I know they’ll perform successfully. This seems to yield a steady stream of PRs and positivity.

If you’re looking for the exact blueprint, I don’t have it. (I mean, I sort of do, but it varies widely from person to person.) Programming is both an art and a science: you must make evidence-based decisions while creating a beautiful masterpiece of assorted equipment and movement variation.

It’s like writing a song: you can pretty much do whatever you want, but you still need to use scales and notes and stuff.

And so here I am, again ready to dispense the secrets that help our members experience success. I hope that these concepts work as well for you and your members as they’ve worked for us.

To be honest, I sometimes think that I program better for our members than I do for myself.

I keep things simple, don’t mess around with rep ranges too much, and assign exercises that I know they’ll perform successfully. This seems to yield a steady stream of PRs and positivity.

If you’re looking for the exact blueprint, I don’t have it. (I mean, I sort of do, but it varies widely from person to person.) Programming is both an art and a science: you must make evidence-based decisions while creating a beautiful masterpiece of assorted equipment and movement variation.

It’s like writing a song: you can pretty much do whatever you want, but you still need to use scales and notes and stuff.

And so here I am, ready to dispense the great secrets that I believe create massive success for our members. I hope that these concepts work as well for you and your members as they’ve worked for us.